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Arty Stuffs
Feb. 5th, 2026 11:47 pmI have been intermittently drawing things, but have been worse than usual about posting them anywhere. So, here are a few of them:
( Various Arty Stuffs Under the Cut )
( Various Arty Stuffs Under the Cut )
Happy New Year!
Dec. 31st, 2025 07:24 pmI keep thinking of things to post here and then not actually getting around to making the post when I'm sitting at a computer.
Never mind. Happy New Year to you all.
A cheerful apologetic wave to those people who optimistically sent Christmas cards despite my dismal record on that front.
I shall now attempt some bullet points about things I considered posting about in December 2025 but failed to.
- Foster-kitties Tabby and Rosa went back to the rescue having put on a fair bit of weight. They had a potential home offer, but I'm not sure if that fell through, since we haven't heard any more about them.
- Instead we were asked to take in Binx, a black cat with a white tuft, and her two-week-old kittens, Gus-gus and Dumpling. They are now coming up to seven weeks old, have sprouted ridiculous long legs, and learned to climb and prance hilariously.
- The idea that Binx would teach the kittens about the litter tray did not appear to work. However, after a few random wees, putting two very shallow litter trays in locations that the kittens had previously chosen, and plonking them in the litter trays every time we went into the room did.
- I decided that the random shoes that arrived through the post over a year ago with no name on them, which nobody in the village admitted to having ordered, had aged sufficiently that I could sell them on ebay, so I did. (I suppose I could have donated them, but the local charity shops seem very unenthusiastic about donations, and I find I need to be feeling quite strong before I can march in and hand things to a sighing volunteer. )
- since the cold cleared and we have had quite a lot of calm, clear weather, I've been sea swimming a few times with the Hazelbeach group. I went today, in fact, and it was the coldest swim yet: it definitely helps if you've been exercising enough to get warm before you get into the sea, even in boots, gloves and my shortie wetsuit.
- Theo completed his scentwork course, which was fun, but he clearly thought it rather easy. There is an exam, but I'm not sure we shall bother with that.
- Went to visit my Mum; came back over the old Severn Bridge. My family lived in Swansea till I was 12, so every holiday involved that bridge: stopping there for the first time in about 40 years was a strange, nostalgic moment.
- Mum, Theo and I went to the Christmas Tree festival at St Eustachius's. It was a very good one. I think I voted for the tree celebrating the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, which had a really good mining chimney. For a Christmas tree, anyway.
- Pp has hurt a finger, bending it backwards in a manner that seems likely to require minor surgery to fix. In the mean time it is strapped up in a brace, which is annoying rather than painful.
- We bought Nordmann firs (one for upstairs, one for downstairs) from Pen Parc Festive Trees this year, which meant we got to trek through a chilly field and pick out the trees. They certainly seem to be holding their needles a lot better than in previous years. Nordmann is a fine wood to carve, too, though I didn't take a chunk off to carve over the festive season. I'll have to wait till 12th night to take my carving wood for this year's decoration.
- there are flowers on the rosemary bushes, and today I found some primroses despite the frosted ground.
Never mind. Happy New Year to you all.
A cheerful apologetic wave to those people who optimistically sent Christmas cards despite my dismal record on that front.
I shall now attempt some bullet points about things I considered posting about in December 2025 but failed to.
- Foster-kitties Tabby and Rosa went back to the rescue having put on a fair bit of weight. They had a potential home offer, but I'm not sure if that fell through, since we haven't heard any more about them.
- Instead we were asked to take in Binx, a black cat with a white tuft, and her two-week-old kittens, Gus-gus and Dumpling. They are now coming up to seven weeks old, have sprouted ridiculous long legs, and learned to climb and prance hilariously.
- The idea that Binx would teach the kittens about the litter tray did not appear to work. However, after a few random wees, putting two very shallow litter trays in locations that the kittens had previously chosen, and plonking them in the litter trays every time we went into the room did.
- I decided that the random shoes that arrived through the post over a year ago with no name on them, which nobody in the village admitted to having ordered, had aged sufficiently that I could sell them on ebay, so I did. (I suppose I could have donated them, but the local charity shops seem very unenthusiastic about donations, and I find I need to be feeling quite strong before I can march in and hand things to a sighing volunteer. )
- since the cold cleared and we have had quite a lot of calm, clear weather, I've been sea swimming a few times with the Hazelbeach group. I went today, in fact, and it was the coldest swim yet: it definitely helps if you've been exercising enough to get warm before you get into the sea, even in boots, gloves and my shortie wetsuit.
- Theo completed his scentwork course, which was fun, but he clearly thought it rather easy. There is an exam, but I'm not sure we shall bother with that.
- Went to visit my Mum; came back over the old Severn Bridge. My family lived in Swansea till I was 12, so every holiday involved that bridge: stopping there for the first time in about 40 years was a strange, nostalgic moment.
- Mum, Theo and I went to the Christmas Tree festival at St Eustachius's. It was a very good one. I think I voted for the tree celebrating the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, which had a really good mining chimney. For a Christmas tree, anyway.
- Pp has hurt a finger, bending it backwards in a manner that seems likely to require minor surgery to fix. In the mean time it is strapped up in a brace, which is annoying rather than painful.
- We bought Nordmann firs (one for upstairs, one for downstairs) from Pen Parc Festive Trees this year, which meant we got to trek through a chilly field and pick out the trees. They certainly seem to be holding their needles a lot better than in previous years. Nordmann is a fine wood to carve, too, though I didn't take a chunk off to carve over the festive season. I'll have to wait till 12th night to take my carving wood for this year's decoration.
- there are flowers on the rosemary bushes, and today I found some primroses despite the frosted ground.
2024 carving
Jan. 10th, 2025 11:28 pmI try to make a carved decoration from each year's Christmas tree. This year's tree was a Nordmann Fir, and I really hope that next year we can find a different species, because the wood was both very hard, and very splintery. Not a fun wood to carve, and although the tree held its needles well, it had almost no scent, and I think the scent is one reason for having a wooden tree.
This is what it looked like when I'd just taken the bark off: it was wet, and it was kind of crumbly and yet at the same time I had to sharpen my chisels a lot. I think possibly I tried working it when it was a bit too green, it did get better as it began to dry, but I've definitely had wood that was much nicer to carve green.
And here's the final version: a puffin on one side...
And on the other side a sea-sunset, using the grain of the tree to make the sun. It was very hard to get the edges of the waves free of spiky bits.
This is what it looked like when I'd just taken the bark off: it was wet, and it was kind of crumbly and yet at the same time I had to sharpen my chisels a lot. I think possibly I tried working it when it was a bit too green, it did get better as it began to dry, but I've definitely had wood that was much nicer to carve green.
And here's the final version: a puffin on one side...
And on the other side a sea-sunset, using the grain of the tree to make the sun. It was very hard to get the edges of the waves free of spiky bits.
So that was 2024
Dec. 28th, 2024 09:52 pmWe whizzed down briefly to Devon before Christmas to see my mother, Pp's goddaughter and her parents and distribute presents.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Trip to Devon
Dec. 5th, 2024 11:53 pmMy Sunday drive down to Devon went very smoothly. Empty, dark and rainy roads. Theo slept happily all the way, having had a good run on a wet beach before we set off.
On Monday, we went and had a rummage in the Luckett woods, where I had cause to remember just how many foxes and deer there are in these woods, something that my memory had previously managed to optimistically dull.
( Read more... )
On Monday, we went and had a rummage in the Luckett woods, where I had cause to remember just how many foxes and deer there are in these woods, something that my memory had previously managed to optimistically dull.
( Read more... )
Things Done
Jan. 1st, 2024 10:20 pmIt's been a wild and windy festive season. I had thought of going to one of the many festive swims, or perhaps out in the kayak, but it was so cold and wet and wild that staying indoors seemed more appealing, not to mention safer.
Most days, even Theo was happy with one short walk and swiftly back inside to toast himself in front of the electric fire.
Pp mentioned that he might like one of the new style of wooden GM's screens that you can customise with relevant bits of paper for various different campaigns. I looked at loads of them, and none of them seemed quite the way I would like them to be, so I've ended up planning to make one, which will take way longer than just buying one of course, but then it's hardly urgently needed. And it's fun to design it and work out where the magnets and things will go.
One day in Betwixtmas, I forced myself to go through all the paperwork that had been hastily stuffed in a corner when the roof came off in storm Eunice in 2022, plus the paperwork that had arrived since then and been stuffed in a pile because what's the point in filing new stuff when you still have piles of old stuff...right?.
Thankfully, all the building work and repairs are now over and done, and this was one of the few last messy odds and ends from that particular crisis. And now it's all been gone through and put in the appropriate place in a filing cabinet, which feels like a disproportionately large relief.
I tried writing something for the LOTR-SESA prompt fest, about Dain Ironfoot, but it ended up longer than I intended and I didn't make the deadline. Oh well, it can go up next week, I suppose!
Tomorrow it's back to work, and it's going to be a busy one: I think we currently have 40 orders waiting to go out, not to mention all the stock piled up on the floor waiting to be documented and photographed and put on the website.
Best wishes to all for the New Year.
Most days, even Theo was happy with one short walk and swiftly back inside to toast himself in front of the electric fire.
Pp mentioned that he might like one of the new style of wooden GM's screens that you can customise with relevant bits of paper for various different campaigns. I looked at loads of them, and none of them seemed quite the way I would like them to be, so I've ended up planning to make one, which will take way longer than just buying one of course, but then it's hardly urgently needed. And it's fun to design it and work out where the magnets and things will go.
One day in Betwixtmas, I forced myself to go through all the paperwork that had been hastily stuffed in a corner when the roof came off in storm Eunice in 2022, plus the paperwork that had arrived since then and been stuffed in a pile because what's the point in filing new stuff when you still have piles of old stuff...right?.
Thankfully, all the building work and repairs are now over and done, and this was one of the few last messy odds and ends from that particular crisis. And now it's all been gone through and put in the appropriate place in a filing cabinet, which feels like a disproportionately large relief.
I tried writing something for the LOTR-SESA prompt fest, about Dain Ironfoot, but it ended up longer than I intended and I didn't make the deadline. Oh well, it can go up next week, I suppose!
Tomorrow it's back to work, and it's going to be a busy one: I think we currently have 40 orders waiting to go out, not to mention all the stock piled up on the floor waiting to be documented and photographed and put on the website.
Best wishes to all for the New Year.
On Sunday, I took Theo out on a social walk organised by a local greyhound rescue. I wouldn't normally have taken him along, since he's a Greek Harehound and very definitely not a sighthound, but Julie, who runs the course he'd been attending and also organised the walk, suggested that we give it a go.
I wasn't entirely sure how he would react to encountering a huge bunch of greyhounds and lurchers. I thought he might be a bit wary, and was prepared to hang back a bit and take it slowly.
He LOVED it. Even though it was a grey old misty day (so no photos, too mirky for that). He was all over the place wagging like mad, sniffing all the dogs (well, apart from the single Afghan, which surprised him a bit), having a little bounce with some of them. He was SUCH a happy hound.
Conclusion: Theo is a scenthound, but having been raised by a sighthound, he considers sighthounds to be His People.
I didn't take Rosie, because she can really only handle very gentle bimbles now, and also she hates other sighthounds and believes she should be the only one. And she also hates rain, and has decided she will only go out if it's sunny. So many opinions!
We seem to have cleared the last of the Shop orders before Christmas OK, and I've made some progress on a new way of tracking stock that I hope will free up some time next year! And I made a Christmas card, as usual, featuring the Pigfaced Packing Orcs.
And today I went swimming, despite the gloom and wind, in a little sheltered bay where the water wasn't *that* cold, really, a mere nine degrees of so.
If I don't manage another update this month, I wish you all well and I am still reading your posts even if I don't always manage to come up with a comment. Also, apologies to anyone who saw this when I was fighting the editor and it was doing weird stuff. I'm still not entirely used to Dreamwidth.
I wasn't entirely sure how he would react to encountering a huge bunch of greyhounds and lurchers. I thought he might be a bit wary, and was prepared to hang back a bit and take it slowly.
He LOVED it. Even though it was a grey old misty day (so no photos, too mirky for that). He was all over the place wagging like mad, sniffing all the dogs (well, apart from the single Afghan, which surprised him a bit), having a little bounce with some of them. He was SUCH a happy hound.
Conclusion: Theo is a scenthound, but having been raised by a sighthound, he considers sighthounds to be His People.
I didn't take Rosie, because she can really only handle very gentle bimbles now, and also she hates other sighthounds and believes she should be the only one. And she also hates rain, and has decided she will only go out if it's sunny. So many opinions!
We seem to have cleared the last of the Shop orders before Christmas OK, and I've made some progress on a new way of tracking stock that I hope will free up some time next year! And I made a Christmas card, as usual, featuring the Pigfaced Packing Orcs.
And today I went swimming, despite the gloom and wind, in a little sheltered bay where the water wasn't *that* cold, really, a mere nine degrees of so.
If I don't manage another update this month, I wish you all well and I am still reading your posts even if I don't always manage to come up with a comment. Also, apologies to anyone who saw this when I was fighting the editor and it was doing weird stuff. I'm still not entirely used to Dreamwidth.
2022 DONE.
Jan. 2nd, 2023 11:08 pmThis year my Mum announced firmly that she would really prefer to spend Christmas at home with her cat Pudding and no other company, so after we had popped down to visit for a couple of days beforehand then came back to Wales. It was very nice and relaxing and the quick visit to Devon was handy for going to the Cheese Shop in Tavistock to buy Christmas Cheese.
We had a nice lunch at the Bearslake Inn before we went home. I think my mother enjoyed it:
( Read more... )
The dogs were quite insistent that they could not possibly go anywhere or do anything due to their extreme levels of Woe, but must remain on their princess-and-the-pea layers of comfy beds. They basically stayed in bed apart from brief pee breaks for an entire day yesterday, and most of today too. I was really quite worried about them yesterday, but not quite worried enough to call on the emergency vet on New Years Day and they are much brighter today. Theo has had a little outing to the beach, and Rosie managed to run up the stairs this afternoon.
So, since there were no walks needed yesterday, I planted some rose bushes that I have had heeled in waiting for me to get around to them, and mulched the roses I planted last year with well rotted manure. The new roses are GHISLAINE DE FÉLIGONDE musk roses. They grow to a theoretical height of 12 feet, so should help to clad the wire fences I erected in a great hurry when we moved here and I urgently needed dog containment solutions. In a perfect world I would replace them with 6 foot fences, but I'm not sure I can endure further infestations of builders at the moment. We had enough of them in 2022.
Today I went and did a new thing: I went swimming in the sea in the winter! I had been swimming with a local sea-swimming group a few times in the summer (I am not brave enough to swim in the sea alone) but November and December were terribly busy and I fell out of the habit. But today someone I met in the summer asked if I would like to go along, and I thought 'WHY NOT' so I did.
It was terribly cold - not too bad on the legs or body, but my hands took one look at the temperature and burst into frozen pain. I've now ordered a pair of neoprene gloves. They will be handy for kayaking, even if I don't make a regular thing of sea-swimming in the cold.
We had a nice lunch at the Bearslake Inn before we went home. I think my mother enjoyed it:
( Read more... )
The dogs were quite insistent that they could not possibly go anywhere or do anything due to their extreme levels of Woe, but must remain on their princess-and-the-pea layers of comfy beds. They basically stayed in bed apart from brief pee breaks for an entire day yesterday, and most of today too. I was really quite worried about them yesterday, but not quite worried enough to call on the emergency vet on New Years Day and they are much brighter today. Theo has had a little outing to the beach, and Rosie managed to run up the stairs this afternoon.
So, since there were no walks needed yesterday, I planted some rose bushes that I have had heeled in waiting for me to get around to them, and mulched the roses I planted last year with well rotted manure. The new roses are GHISLAINE DE FÉLIGONDE musk roses. They grow to a theoretical height of 12 feet, so should help to clad the wire fences I erected in a great hurry when we moved here and I urgently needed dog containment solutions. In a perfect world I would replace them with 6 foot fences, but I'm not sure I can endure further infestations of builders at the moment. We had enough of them in 2022.
Today I went and did a new thing: I went swimming in the sea in the winter! I had been swimming with a local sea-swimming group a few times in the summer (I am not brave enough to swim in the sea alone) but November and December were terribly busy and I fell out of the habit. But today someone I met in the summer asked if I would like to go along, and I thought 'WHY NOT' so I did.
It was terribly cold - not too bad on the legs or body, but my hands took one look at the temperature and burst into frozen pain. I've now ordered a pair of neoprene gloves. They will be handy for kayaking, even if I don't make a regular thing of sea-swimming in the cold.
Merry Christmas all!
Dec. 24th, 2022 04:33 pm
Some years ago we decided on the conceit that the Shop on the Borderlands packing was done by orcs. (really, it’s done by me & PP, but orcs seemed more on brand. So each year since, I have drawn the orcs doing something vaguely festive, and here they are again.
These are not Tolkieny orcs – or at least, they don’t reflect the popular ‘once elves’ origin story of Tolkien orcs. They are old-school pigfaced orcs, creatures of very little refinement but apparently a great appreciation of Christmas Jumpers.
I think it is time to admit that this year, Christmas cards have ended up as good intentions rather than actually making it to the post. Ah well. I'd like to say that it was a deliberate decision to donate to charity instead, but to be honest it was more random onset of time than deliberate choice, and even then it took me ages to decide who to donate to. Anyway, I've made a donation to Dogstar (who support dogs in Sri Lanka, including work against rabies) and also to Freedom from Torture, who (perhaps obviously) help people who have survived torture.
.
The cat came back! And other news
Dec. 29th, 2021 05:49 pmFirst, the most important news! Our little grey cat Fankil went missing back in April. Now we have him back!
Two weeks ago, I saw on a lost pet group on Facebook a post about a grey cat that had been haunting the workshop of a holiday complex about ten miles away. He had been caught and brought to the local animal rescue, which had pronounced him un-microchipped and feral. Fankil was microchipped, and not at all feral but microchips do fail, and he had been missing for many months, so we arranged to go and see the found cat anyway.
When we got there, the cat was in a pen with an enclosed kennel bit, jammed behind the bed. He peed himself in terror when the door opened and growled savagely at us. We thought surely this isn't our cat. His ears looked wrong, his eyes were a bit too yellow and we couldn't see the white hairs on his chest, and his feet were not plain purple but dotted with pink. He was the right size, colour and sex, but ten miles is a long walk for a cat.
But we went and sat with him for a bit, and he really warmed up to Pp — way more than he had to the rescue volunteer who had trapped him, or the guy who found him in the workshop and had been feeding him for weeks. It was hard to tell, but it really seemed like this cat knew Pp. And the rescue was very clear that with his behaviour, nobody else was likely to take this terrified stinky skinny cat home.
So we agreed to take him home for a few days. Worst case scenario: free cat!
But I really wasn't sure he was our cat, until Theo wandered up, sniffed and totally ignored him. Theo is pretty excitable around strange cats, and it was clear that he didn't consider this cat to fall into that group.
Since then, the cat has eaten a number of huge meals, has purred hugely, has come over for strokes and cuddles, and in fact has absolutely not behaved in any way like a scared feral cat, or even a cat in a new home. He behaves like a cat that IS home, and even his ears have changed shape now he's not trying to pretend he's invisible. And he DOES have a few white hairs on his chest. We just couldn't see them properly in the poor light. I haven't yet tried properly checking his feet, but I suspect the pink speckles might be scar tissue from the long walk.
We have him back!
What else happened? Oh yes, Christmas. We went down to stay with my mother for a few days. She had a cold (had tested negative for Covid a couple times before we went down and the cold was improving) so decided to mask up to contain the sniffles.
I got Pp a roman-style gladius as a present (I suspect the beautiful damascus steel leaf-shaped blade is not very authentic but it is very pretty). He was pleased, and importantly, nobody has yet been slain.
Those socks are on the radiator because we took the hounds out over Dartmoor on Christmas morning and it absolutely POURED on us and we became very very wet . It then continued to pour all day. Possibly wettest Christmas in years?
This is a postcard that my Mum received recently, via an ex-neighbour in Swansea. We moved away from Swansea when I was 13 — and the postcard wasn't even sent to Swansea. It was sent from London to my father at an address in Birkenhead, where they lived, I think, before they moved to Leicester, which is where they lived before Swansea.
It's post-marked 1966! I am torn between being amazed that it finally reached my Mum at all, and being amazed that it took so long to get there. Who 'Jackie' was has been lost in the mists of time.
Back to Pembrokeshire, and the hounds and the Christmas tree. I am thinking I may not make a Christmas decoration this year. I can't remember what I did with last year's tree, or whether I kept a bit to carve. I might have to start over with a chunk of this tree next year.
Random photo of a lurcher posing on the beach after we got back.
Oh!I forgot to say that on the way driving home from Devon on Boxing day, the exhaust fell off the Volvo. Or, at least, it sort of fell off and was bouncing on the road as we drove, and we looked at a large Volvo stuffed with Stuff and Dogs, and concluded that our chances of getting all that rescued on Boxing Day were slim, so we turned off the motorway and found a very pot-holey lane and drove on that, feeling rather like we were in an episode of Top Gear in till the exhaust actually fell off and could be wrapped in dog towels and shoved inside the car.)
After that the drive home was Very Loud, but at least it wasn't likely to slay a following driver on the motorway, which would have been an unfestive thing to do on a Boxing Day.
On that Volvo the sunroof doesn't work, the driver's side window doesn't work, the drivers door is a different colour to the car, the passenger side has a big bash in it, the back bumper is semi-detached from the exhaust pothole operation, and the aircon needs regassing. And we bought it as an emergency replacement for 1500 quid about five years ago, hoping it would last a year. So I feel the moment has probably come to replace it. I just can't decide yet with what.
Am extremely cosy.
Dec. 27th, 2020 11:12 pm The house is full of food and sleepy hounds and dozing cats. We have eaten way too much, and I'm still gently nibbling on a lump of chestnut and cranberry stuffing. Here are a few photos from the last week or so:
Rosie on a visit to the Koffi Lodge cafe. We were in Tier 1, least likelihood of plague, at that point, so everything was pretty much as normal (we're now in Tier 2, so slightly more serious). Rosies long legs poking out under her jumper and overcoat make me laugh.
( Read more... )
I hope you mostly managed a happy Christmas, if that's a thing for you, so far as possible at the moment.
Rosie on a visit to the Koffi Lodge cafe. We were in Tier 1, least likelihood of plague, at that point, so everything was pretty much as normal (we're now in Tier 2, so slightly more serious). Rosies long legs poking out under her jumper and overcoat make me laugh.
( Read more... )
I hope you mostly managed a happy Christmas, if that's a thing for you, so far as possible at the moment.
How lovely are thy branches?
Dec. 11th, 2020 04:35 pmDefinitely not moving before Christmas now. But! we do at long last have a planned completion date: 8th Jan. So we can stop thinking about that until after New Year now
Had yet another house viewing today and since we had to flee from that so as not to breathe on each other, we went and walked in the rain on Kit Hill, then bought a Christmas tree. This year it is a Fraser Fir, which is a tree I don't think we've had before. It has a really wonderful scent, and a faint pale bloom on the dark green needles. It remains to be seen how well the wood will carve. Tomorrow we'll have to get the decorations out of the loft, probably for the last time (for this loft, anyway!)
Had yet another house viewing today and since we had to flee from that so as not to breathe on each other, we went and walked in the rain on Kit Hill, then bought a Christmas tree. This year it is a Fraser Fir, which is a tree I don't think we've had before. It has a really wonderful scent, and a faint pale bloom on the dark green needles. It remains to be seen how well the wood will carve. Tomorrow we'll have to get the decorations out of the loft, probably for the last time (for this loft, anyway!)
Christmas 2019
Dec. 26th, 2019 03:29 pmI haven't finished my customary Christmas wood-carving, but it looks like it's going to be a weird Star Wars alien sort of thing, partly because that's what was hiding in this year's Christmas tree wood, and partly because we went to see Rise of Skywalker last week, and enjoyed it. We went to the 11pm showing, since that meant we could put Theo to bed in his crate and not feel guilty.
Christmas: we cooked a duck, and my mother and Pp's father came over and helped us eat it. A fabulous sunny day for a change, so the dogs got two walks: one with me and one later with me and my mum, whose ability to walk seems to be improving again after several years of hip and foot problems.
Mum bought the cats new catnip toys, and Gothmog and Nenya proceeded to indulge in them with great delight: they were drunk last night, and still drunk this morning! I think they've had enough now though, Gothmog is now fast asleep.
Boxing Day: the sun came out and the day looked promising, so we decided to take the dogs to the beach. This was optimistic of us. Shortly afterwards VERY wet. It was raining a little as we made our way down the long steep winding path to the open sands, raining more as we wandered past the cliffs, and at the point where we were coming down to the waves, it POURED so enthusiastically that the hounds were crying to go home.
Still, we made the effort and had a walk. Theo met piles of dogs (including a saluki who wanted to play with him, but she was too full-on and made him squeal for mercy. This is ironic, since I often have to stop him nipping Rosie's legs to encourage her to run.)
And! I am now dry again and warm with a glass of wine, mince-pies with clotted cream, and a new snuggly dressing-gown, and I think I shall do some writing.
Lots of Shop on the Borderlands orders are waiting to go out, (including several where people got gift vouchers for Christmas and couldn't wait to spend them!) but they can wait until tomorrow to be packed.
Christmas: we cooked a duck, and my mother and Pp's father came over and helped us eat it. A fabulous sunny day for a change, so the dogs got two walks: one with me and one later with me and my mum, whose ability to walk seems to be improving again after several years of hip and foot problems.
Mum bought the cats new catnip toys, and Gothmog and Nenya proceeded to indulge in them with great delight: they were drunk last night, and still drunk this morning! I think they've had enough now though, Gothmog is now fast asleep.
Boxing Day: the sun came out and the day looked promising, so we decided to take the dogs to the beach. This was optimistic of us. Shortly afterwards VERY wet. It was raining a little as we made our way down the long steep winding path to the open sands, raining more as we wandered past the cliffs, and at the point where we were coming down to the waves, it POURED so enthusiastically that the hounds were crying to go home.
Still, we made the effort and had a walk. Theo met piles of dogs (including a saluki who wanted to play with him, but she was too full-on and made him squeal for mercy. This is ironic, since I often have to stop him nipping Rosie's legs to encourage her to run.)
And! I am now dry again and warm with a glass of wine, mince-pies with clotted cream, and a new snuggly dressing-gown, and I think I shall do some writing.
Lots of Shop on the Borderlands orders are waiting to go out, (including several where people got gift vouchers for Christmas and couldn't wait to spend them!) but they can wait until tomorrow to be packed.
Merry Christmas
Dec. 24th, 2019 12:46 amIt's time to admit that I've pretty much failed on the Christmas card front this year. So, Merry virtual Christmas, a jolly Yule, Happy Hanukkah, a blessed solstice, or bottoms up, depending on what sort of winter celebration you prefer.
This has been a tough year for a lot of people I know, so I hope it doesn't seem too annoying when I say that for me personally, it's been a good one. I've managed to *mostly* escape gloom, let go of excessive stressing about things I can't change, accept that it's OK to focus energy rather than trying to do everything, and focus more on positives.
I hope it will be a better year next year for those who haven't been so lucky.
A Merry Christmas from the Orcs
Dec. 7th, 2019 10:25 pm
(Logo & text added digitally: I am not much good at hand-lettering!)
I'm still struggling with photographing stuff like this. The camera seems to be having difficulty with the difference between the pinky-orange background and the green of the orcs. I upped the contrast and reduced brightness, and that helped, but now the background books look more distinct and foregroundy than they should do, and the detail on the orc's arms look clumsy and less subtle than they should.... at least the miniatures and the big dice on the table looks about right. And I do like the orcs expressions.
I make a card...
Apr. 7th, 2019 12:11 amI got tagged by Lurcherlink this year asking if I would join in with designing a card for their card competition thingy!
I did something rather different to last year; Brusho and ink rather than acrylics. I am now seized by doubt and wondering if I should have gone with acrylics after all, but I do like the vague drifty colours of the trees from the Brusho... Sorry for the out of season festive post. I suppose they need to plan this stuff early!
I did something rather different to last year; Brusho and ink rather than acrylics. I am now seized by doubt and wondering if I should have gone with acrylics after all, but I do like the vague drifty colours of the trees from the Brusho... Sorry for the out of season festive post. I suppose they need to plan this stuff early!
Christmas with Beeping
Dec. 30th, 2018 12:43 amWe went over to my mother's house for Christmas this year. Rosie was much delighted by this decision, she likes being invited out to lunch, sitting on my mother's sofas for a change and snuggling the humans. Mum's cat Pudding is less keen on a visiting sighthound, but he did make several brief solemn appearances, though I didn't manage to photograph him.
Below the cut: Pp in his Christmas jumper with the Christmas puddings on it, which has seen much wear this year:
( Read more... )
The festive season has been much enlivened by Gothmog kitten, who is now vastly confident, hilarious, and very very fast. Our remaining problem with her is to prevent her from molesting poor Rosie for her own amusement. They shared a bed yesterday, but poor Rosie is not keen on the rough kitten play of Awake & Riotous Gothmog who races up to the top of the big cat tree and flings herself joyously at a dog ten times her size...
( Read more... )
Poor Fankil is still in hiding! But I bought Pp an infra-red motion-sensitive camera for Christmas, and so at least we can see him. He seems to mostly get up when we go to bed!
Below the cut: Pp in his Christmas jumper with the Christmas puddings on it, which has seen much wear this year:
( Read more... )
The festive season has been much enlivened by Gothmog kitten, who is now vastly confident, hilarious, and very very fast. Our remaining problem with her is to prevent her from molesting poor Rosie for her own amusement. They shared a bed yesterday, but poor Rosie is not keen on the rough kitten play of Awake & Riotous Gothmog who races up to the top of the big cat tree and flings herself joyously at a dog ten times her size...
( Read more... )
Poor Fankil is still in hiding! But I bought Pp an infra-red motion-sensitive camera for Christmas, and so at least we can see him. He seems to mostly get up when we go to bed!
Twirly 2017 carving!
Dec. 31st, 2017 03:56 pmI did it! I got the 2017 carving made before the end of 2017! 
This Christmas tree turns out to have quite dense, tough wood, and I was quite glad I'd chosen only a thin piece to carve. I didn't have any great ideas about what to carve, so I just chopped bits off and found after a while that I had made a twirly snake. Then it looked like there was a sort of blob left on the top, and Pp suggested I make it into an apple and make it Garden of Eden themed, so that's what I tried to do. The bit sticking up is more or less apple-tree-leaf shaped. So, now next year I definitely only have one carving to make, not two. I wonder if I'll remember that in Dec 2018.
And a written thing: I was trying to write Quenta Narquelion as a story entirely from Ghost Feanor’s point of view but it turns out that the downside to a single POV is that you don’t get to answer questions about when other people work things out? Who knew? This writing thing is so complicated. POV switching is the way to go, honestly, writing just one POV starts to feel like being stuck inside a box after a while.
Anyway, someone asked about when it was that Maedhros worked out that he was being followed by Ghost Feanor wandering around Beleriand like a creepy ghost stalker, and I started replying and then I had to go away and make a stew and when I got back I’d mostly written this in my head, so here it is: As One Who Returns From The Dead
Happy New Year all!
Christmas 2017
Dec. 29th, 2017 03:12 pmI bought this year's Christmas tree from Bohetherick Farm: I think it's a Nordmann fir: a very nice compact tree with a good shape to the trunk. I had to squelch through the mud to find it and Rosie had to endure an excessively friendly springer spaniel. It's almost exactly the right height without having to chop any bits off too, though that does mean that I don't have a chunk of the trunk to carve with. I've sort of lost track of the number of carvings made from previous trees now, but there are quite a lot of them. I have taken a lower branch off to make the 2017 carving, but haven't started work on it yet.
What else has happened? Oh yes, we went to see The Last Jedi, and it was surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting much to be honest, but it had a lot of plot and felt like it was properly part of the original movie series somehow.
A rather belated Merry Christmas and I hope you all have a Happy New Year!
Still no voice
Dec. 21st, 2017 12:28 amYet Pp tried to phone me this afternoon and was honestly surprised that I did not answer the phone. I literally can barely whisper, against any kind of background noise I am totally inaudible!
Here are some baubles that we have hung on ribbon up the stairs: 
And here is a Tolkien Secret Santa Exchange story in which Narvi is a woman dwarf, and meets and marries Celebrimbor: Days of Peace.
It was a slightly alarming exchange request to write, because it was literally just that, no other options or characters provided. (Well, recip also wanted them becoming parents, but I have serious difficulty with writing childbirth involving a mother who is probably under 4'6" and a father who is over 7 feet tall as lighthearted fluff even if they weren't also different species, so I passed on that particular part of it.) Still, I feel the end result is reasonably readable.
